Pankisi argument

Last week the foreign ministry of Georgia accused Russia of trespassing into the airspace near the village of Shatili. The village is situated near the Chechen part of the Russian-Georgian border, not far from the Pankisi Gorge of Georgia, where most of the population is Chechen. In the early 2000s the region was bombed by Russian Air Forces many times during the second Chechen campaign. Tbilisi worries that Russia is testing the reaction of the international community in case of a renewal of the Pankisi problem.

According to the foreign ministry, three Russian MI-8 helicopters trespassed into Georgian airspace at 01:05 of the night of September 7th, and hovered over a Georgian border police base for 15 minutes. It is interesting that an official statement was made only on September 8th. It seems the authorities of the country needed a day to decide how to react to Russia’s action.

Georgian diplomats believe that Moscow tried to provoke a reaction, which could lead to an escalation of the situation. Moreover, Tbilisi accused Russia of breaking the agreement between Sarkozy and Medvedev, signed after the five-day war of 2008. The foreign ministry called the trespassing “confirmation of aggressive intentions towards Georgia,” and promised “to inform the UN, the OSCE, the EU and other relevant international organizations about the incident.” Tbilisi expects from them “adequate appraisal of violation of Georgian air space by Russian Military Forces; continuation of pressure on Russia for implementation of the agreement of the 12th of August 2008 and respect fundamental principles of international law by it.”

Observers note that it is first incident of violation of air space after the five-day war. “Before 2008 there was a lot of it, but I haven’t heard about such things since the war. Except for unmanned sensor aircrafts,” the editor-in-chief of the independent military analysis magazine Arsenali, Irakly Aladashvili, told VK. “We don’t know why exactly MI-8 helicopters flew to our territory, but they could be equipped with guns. Moreover, three helicopters can carry a significant number of soldiers.” Aladashvili noted that the incident took place at night, “which means the pilots used a night observation system. In any other case nobody would risk flying at low altitude in a difficult mountain environment.”

“As Georgia is very careful in regions situated close to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as EU observers are present there, Moscow is scoping out a new front for the information war in the Chechen part,” the independent political scientist, NikaImnaishvili, told VK. “At first Mikhail Saakashvili had managed to calm down the Pankisi problem, but in recent times Moscow began accusing Georgia of supporting Chechen terrorists and reconstructing their bases in Pankisi.”

Accordin gto the expert, the reason for remembering the Pankisi argument is the uncertainty of fundamental problems in Russian-Georgian relations.

A source in the foreign ministry informed VK that Georgian diplomats have already talked to representatives of key Western countries and organizations, trying to encourage them to take a serious diplomatic demarche in reply to the provocation.

Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively to VK.